GU Hikes Undergraduate Tuition 5.5 Percent
The University Board of Directors voted last week to raise undergraduate tuition by 5.5 percent, outpacing the rate of inflation.
Undergraduates will pay $37,536 for the 2008-2009 academic year, up from this year’s $35,568. Tuition has increased by more than $7,700 in the last five years.
In addition, housing and meal plans rates will rise by 5 percent. The cost of a 14-meal plan will increase from $3,600 to $3,780.
Membership fees for Yates Field House will also be raised 5 percent. With tuition, housing and fees included, it will cost more than $50,000 to attend Georgetown next year.
The board also raised graduate school tuitions, with Medical Center tuition going up 3.5 percent from $39,958 to $41,356, and Law Center tuition rising 6.8 percent from $39,390 to $42,065.
The trend of rising tuition is typical for private four-year colleges and universities, according to a report released by the College Board last year. In the 2006-2007 school a tuition costs rose by an average $1,404 — a 6.3 percent increase since the previous year.
According to university spokesperson Julie Bataille, the growing cost “reflects the reality that many of our operating expenses continue to increase at rates higher than inflation.” She cited utilities, technology and financial aid as the main sources of these growing operating costs.
“Georgetown remains heavily tuition-dependent to cover operating expenses, largely due to the fact that we began fundraising much later than our peer institutions,” Bataille said.
“It is important to realize that while tuition rates have increased, Georgetown’s overall financial plan also makes strategic investments that provide exceptional academic programs and services,” she said. “Georgetown remains committed to fulfilling our historic commitment to meeting the full financial need of undergraduates and has increased institutional support for financial aid in order to do so.”
Increasing support for financial aid will be one of the main priorities of the next capital campaign, Bataille said. Georgetown’s Annual Fund and the Georgetown Fund are two main sources for campaign funding.
The previous capital campaign lasted from 1997 until 2003, and earned $1 billion. Current plans for the next capital campaign are to raise approximately $1.5 billion in priority areas including faculty support, financial aid and facilities, she said.
Georgetown accepts undergraduates on a need-blind basis and has an admission policy to meet the full demonstrated financial need of eligible students.
Georgetown covers the cost of this policy in its annual operating budget, Bataille said. The university’s annual expenditure for student financial aid is now about $57.1 million — a spending rate that has increased more than twice that of tuition over the past decade, according to Bataille.
The Office of Financial Services could not be reached for comment on the tuition increase.
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Ineffective, unresponsive, and inept administrations and bureaucracies are expensive to maintain and grow unrestrained without any improvement in quality. Just look at the federal government.
This is Georgetown desperately doing whatever it can to bring in more money. What is the school doing with all the money it claims to be raising? Are those claims not true? After a supposedly record-breaking fundraising year, curious that tuition is going up so much.
Georgetown's undergraduate campus has, for at least the last 10 years (probably more) constantly supplemented and supported the income of every other aspect of the school. Undergraduates are cash cows to Georgetown - in and out in 4 years, don't require intensive research facilities, less willing to speak out in protest or investigate, and less politically / socially connected.
It's in the balance sheets - whenever they (so infrequently) get released. Undergrads keep so much afloat at Georgetown (most especially, the hospital during the years when gtown bore the direct financial burdens of that financial swamp pit)
Georgetown is a great school, no doubt. However, is it the best? One of the top 5? ... hmmm ... I'm not so sure. One generally likes to live in a world wherein we pay for things based on the value they carry in the marketplace. Our per-annum cost of attendance as students is among the ten highest in the United States of America (once housing / fees / food are thrown in)
There seems to be an asymmetry of $ extracted vs. value provided. Hmm ... I wonder how long this can go on. Georgetown has raised its tuition rates several times in the last 8 years - including a marvelously large hike in ?2004? I believe.
For families without the resources, Georgetown (unable due to its ironically sub-status endowment, to receive a full package from the school) is becoming increasingly 'off limits' - there goes the sliver of diversity. Indeed, even for families WITH the resources, the cost benefit analysis is turning less and less against gtown: MOST gtown students are able to get into several competitively situated institutions - places like Duke, Notre Dame, UChicago, Northwestern, Brown, Cornell, Columbia, NYU, Penn, etc.
The consistent rapaciousness of the administration and board toward the students (do we look like walking purses and wallets?) is going to bite the school in the ass eventually.
I hope that they wise up and learn how to generate parallel sources of maintainence income before that happens. I doubt that this will pan out - old dogs, no new tricks.
The undergrads are not the cash cows of the university. This is completely false. It is expensive to maintain on campus facilities and this cost is not entirely covered by undergraduate tuition. This is why (along with inept financial management in the past decade) the university is in an incredible amount of debt. Undergrad tuition has not gone to pay for the new business center, nor will it go to pay for the new science center, these have been financed through large donations and fund raising. Most of the undergrad tuition goes to, after it pays for classes, teachers, etc. paying off debt but it is not an effective way this debt.
The true cash cows of the university are the Graduate students who pay higher tuition in proportion to the amount of campus resources they consume.
You claim that Georgetown is not as excellent of a university as the tuition would imply- by who's standard? You claim it is not in the top five- who's top five? If we were to use the US News and World reports list (a thoroughly un-useful and unreliable list) then no we would not be in the top five but neither would George Washington which has a much larger tuition approaching (i believe) the 40k mark.
The other Universities you list have similar tuitions to Gtown, but are helped by larger endowments when it comes to financing students who can not afford tuition. You do point this out and it is correct, however you go on to make an horrible statement: that the high cost of tuition will decrease diversity on campus. While the legitimacy of a University seeking diversity on campuses is debatable and not a debate for this time it seems to be, in your mind, a legitimate and desirable goal of Georgetown University. That higher tuition would decrease diversity would imply that few individuals who represent the minority of students at Georgetown would be able to attend; that minority being not white, upper income, and/or Christian. I hope that you did not mean by this statement what it can be read as saying: that is that because lower income students would not be able to afford to attend Georgetown, Black and Hispanic students would not be able to attend either. This is a completely racist and untrue remark and I hope you did not mean it this way.
To your implication that students who can get into Georgetown would turn it down in favor of similar institutions because of the tuition i offer to you the record high application this year. Although this is attributable to the dropping of early admittance programs at many top universities, the tuition was already at very high levels when these students applied and the rise does not appear, to me, to be egregious and enough to turn away many accepted students.
I really wish they would charge us more in tuition. Maybe peg our tuition rate to gas prices or something. Why won't the administration lighten up, stop being so conservative, and just charge us more already?
I.
You don't know what you're talking about in terms of the financial flows for the school. There's nothing to debate here. I look at your post and I know that you haven't actually seen the numbers EVER. Look at the financial account figures. The most recent ones aren't available online, but you can easily get them by request (go to Healy). [When I first started reading into these ... I was shocked. Absolutely shocked]
II.
Georgetown is not top 5. Sorry. Great school. Love it dearly. Not top 5. Not top 10. Top 20. Hopefully. The point I want you to realize is that they are demanding one of the highest tuitions in the WORLD ... the WORLD. And there are many many other substitutes out there with as good or better products (environment / students / professors / opportunities) which may cost less.
III.
Diversity = socioeconomic diversity. Wasn't ever thinking in terms of race. How utterly ... 1990s. However, this is not to say that a disproportionate share of the poor in America are not black (they are) or Hispanic (they are as well). Those are, again, facts.
IV.
App rate is up means nothing. I don't know the numbers, but to make that statement hold any water, you'd have to look at a number of other factors. (I am thinking of about ... 8 off the top of my head, involving national, regional, and other instituion specific trends). But, to start with the simplest: app #s don't mean a thing if you aint got the students' bodies in the classroom. Yield. Yield would be the first thing we'd want to add to do an honest assessment.
I appreciate your post - you took time to write and you clearly believe in what you are saying. But it is also lacking factual bases for the argumentation. Also, let's not get too bogged down here (which is, unfortunately, a sin I feel I myself have committed by responding in such detail): the bottom line is that Georgetown is AGAIN raising tuition rates, without any actual justification for why they are doing it, in an economy about to enter into a recessionary period, as the marketplace of elite higher-education grows increasingly more competitive and is able to offer increasingly strong incentives to defect from 'Georgetown' as a potential applicant.
as a student on financial aid, and having worked in the fin aid office for quite some time, i can say that the university DOES give plenty of aid to low income students. while i might not be able to say the same for middle class students, students (white, black, hispanic, whatever) that come from poor backgrounds are able to afford georgetown, due to plentiful aid.
most every top school has raised their tuition by 4-6 percent. dont indict georgetown for it, rather criticize the whole establishment. i for one am tired of the rampant excessive criticism of this school...if gtown is too expensive/poorly administrated/unsophisticated/whatever for you than go somewhere else!
Georgetown's rate of tuition increase in the last ten years has outpaced all but 3 of its top 25 competitors. Yes, you're right: they've all raised tuition. But Georgetown is one of the worst offenders.
I just graduated from Georgetown with much debt. The financial aid package I received was full of loans (plus, perkins, and stafford). I did not have too many choices in where I could go to school. It was a decent university such as GU or straight to state school. I worked so hard in H.S. and my parents and I both bit our lips and took the jump.
GU does give plenty of money to those who are poor. However, I do feel that the middle to upper middle class families are tremendously burdened. It is my belief that GU is full of the very rich and the poor, with a small middle class pool of enrollees. I wish GU would give this information out. Right now, my parents and I are struggling to pay off all the loans GU gave me throughout the years. I would highly suggest anyone who applies to GU to think twice. Apply to other good schools and do not bother for GU if you are in this socioeconomic bracket. I did well at GU, but there are so many that pay so much and do poorly.
GU needs to be more compassionate. I am glad they give full rides to some because they come from poor backgrounds... but what is the cost when you give false financial aid packages to all those other students who you make become poor in the process. Be fair to all... please.
In the country of the self made man ( in theory ) , where you are the ´architect of your own future´, parents have to pay a fortune for their adult´s kids education. 4 years and USD 200,000 for nice buildings & good sports, it still is very difficult to find someone in America who knows geography or who speak a 2nd language. Michael Moore has to make a movie out of it, this is the mock of the world.
This is something that happened to other universities too, as far a I know! I can understand why they raised the tuition, but I can’t still see how they really expect the students to pay for it! Here is a problem, and of course there are some persons who will take advantage of this situation, like you said!
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I agree with undergrad student, who says that the undergrads are not the cash cows of the university. Let’s face it! If we would really calculate all the facilities that universities offer in campus, we would easy get to a big amount of money, and a school can’t afford that money without asking for them.
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